A taste of the server lag we should be expecting when we all march on over to Northrend that is, and it does not look too good for us. The event was cool and everything, but the lag was awful. And this was with about 40-50 players at the event.

For those who are not familiar with the event, this event will give us an introduction to the upcoming expansion, Wrath of the Lich King.

If you are Alliance, there is an event which takes place at the Stormwind Harbors, where the King Varian Wrynn and company defends the harbors from forces of Arthas. If you are Horde, you will witness a duel between Thrall and Garrosh Hellscream. Eventually Orgrimmar is attacked by the forces of Arthas, leaving Thrall, Garrosh Hellscream, High Overlord Saurfang, and Lady Sylvanas Windrunner to defend the city. In both instances, the attackers are defeated, and the event will reset and start again every hour or so.

It is nice that Blizzard is giving us a small event to prepare us for the upcoming expansion, but they really need to work on their server stability a bit. If this lag was what I was experiencing with amount of players equivalent to say, Ironforge AH/Bank area, then I fear of what we will be seeing at the starting areas in Northrend. It is going to be a repeat of the opening night of the Burning Crusade.

“But there will be TWO starting areas for Northrend!” Yea I understand the argument but think of it this way. Right before the Burning Crusade hit, the number of subscribers was at 4.5 million. We’re looking at more than double the number of subscribers when Wrath of the Lich King. If the two starting areas in Northrend effectively splits the population in half, we’re still looking at a repeat of the opening of the Burning Crusade. Now it is going to happen in two areas instead of one.

Hopefully the very lengthy server maintenance we experienced yesterday was to fix some of that problem. We’ll find out tomorrow night (Thursday morning) at midnight. Goodbye Outland, it was a fun ride. Hello Northrend!

It has almost been a month since The Echoes of Doom patch was released, and the Achievement system with it. Since the release, everyone and their mothers have been running around doing ridiculous chores in order to unlock these Achievements. Including myself.

Now there a few achievements out there which take a massive amount of time to unlock, a few which only takes a few minutes, and then there are some which requires a bit of luck. Being a Mage, there are a few tricks we have in our Spellbook which may help make some of those achievements easier to acquire.

The Exploration Achievements

For our first trick, we have the ability to Teleport to every Major City in our faction, as well as the main Capital in Outland. We can travel to any location in the World of Warcraft fairly quickly, without any help.

There have been a increase in Portal requests thanks to the Achievement system. Players with their Hearth Stone on cooldown, will be looking for Mages to take them where they want to go. This also ties in well with the next achievement I will be talking about.

The Loremaster Achievements

These achievements require you to go back and complete any old quests you may have skipped while leveling up. Which there will be quite a lot that you haven’t done yet, and quite a lot of traveling you will need to do.

Remember to set your map to Track Low Level Quests, and concentrate on one level at a time. As a Mage, we can afford to set our Hearth Stone to where we are questing, without fear of getting back to a Major City when we have to.

Oh and while you are questing in certain areas, if there is an Instance around, you might as well start up on our next group of achievements.

Classic Dungeon Achievements

As a Mage, we are able to Solo pretty much all of the Classic Dungeons. The only thing holding us back would be instances which require Keys that you don’t have, or require two other players to help start an event (Upper Blackrock Spire).

Who knows, you may get lucky and unlock a Feat of Strength while soloing Stratholme?

Food and Drink Achievements

For these two achievements, we are required to eat 50 different types of food, and 25 different types of drinks. Food and Water? That is our specialty!

As a Mage, we get a head start on this achievement, with 8 Ranks of Food, and 9 Ranks of Water available to conjure up. Each different Rank count towards the total for each achievement. It is up to you if you want to share some of it with your friends.

“Going Down?” Achievement

While all the rest of the less classes are complaining in Guild Chat about dying many times trying to get this achievement, this was the easiest, and most likely the first achievement we got when we logged on patch day. All thanks a little Spell we have called Ice Block.

Simply fly straight up on your flying mount really high, dismount, and be prepare to pop your Ice Block. Pop it a bit early in order to compensate for any lag you may have, and then voila! You got your achievement.

For those without a flying mount yet, you can do the same thing by jumping off Lumber Mill in Arathi Basin, or if you are Alliance, off the top of the Stormwind Harbor. Thanks to Willie for the heads up on this tip!

There are probably more achievements out there which I may have missed, but these are some which came to mind while writing this. If you have anymore to add, let me know and I’ll add it to the list. Have fun getting sucked into the Achievement System!Related Posts:

• Patch 3.0.3 – Buffs, Nerfs, and Fixes

The latest patch was released yesterday during Tuesday’s regular weekly maintenance. Though the patch will only be remembered for being the Nerf Hammer for Retribution Paladins, there were a few changes that will affect Mages as well. You can check out the full patch notes for the latest patch HERE.

As for Mage changes, let’s take a look at the new changes we need to deal with:

Mages

• Arcane Potency: The additional crit bonus is now consumed immediately on cast of a travel time spell, so it is no longer possible to make two spells benefit from one charge. (Ex. Fireball followed by Fireblast.)
• Blast Wave: no longer receives double the intended critical strike bonus from Combustion.
• Burnout: Now consumes extra mana as intended when Living Bomb gets a critical strike.
• Brain Freeze: Now only frost spells that can chill can trigger the free Fireball proc from this talent.
• Cold as Ice: No longer reduces the cooldown on Deep Freeze.
• Deep Freeze: Now consumes a charge of Fingers of Frost when used.
• Focus Magic: Now works properly when mages with this talent use the ability on each other.
• Frostfire Bolt: The periodic damage effect from Rank 2 of this spell now benefits from spell power gains.
• Living Bomb: Mana cost reduced to be the same as Arcane Explosion.. It no longer causes the caster to stand up when the final explosion occurs and it is now possible for each mage to have Living Bomb active on a target.
• Master of Elements: Now works with Living Bomb.
• Molten Fury: This talent no longer prevents Ice Lance ranks 2 and 3 from dealing triple damage against frozen targets.
• Reduced the mana cost of Fireball, Frostbolt, Frostfire Bolt, Arcane Blast, Arcane Missiles, and Arcane Explosion.
• Torment the Weak: Now works correctly when the Mage also knows the Molten Fury Talent.

Buffs:

A big buff for Mages is the Mana cost reduction on all of the Mage’s main nuke spells. Some players were having Mana problems, and this should help a bit.

Nerfs:

Brain Freeze can only proc off of Spells with a Chill effect now. This means it will no longer proc off of Ice Lance. It does however mean that it can now proc off of Ice Armor.

Deep Freeze is no longer effected by Cold as Ice now. This means that the 30 second cooldown of Deep Freeze, can no longer be reduced.

Fixes:

The rest of the changes are fixes to talents to make them behave like they should have been. You could say they’re all small nerfs, but this was the way the talents were supposed to be.

Thoughts:

The Mana reduction is a nice change to have. I personally haven’t had any Mana problems at all in PvE, but in PvP, this will be a nice change for me.

The nerfs to the Frost Tree I saw were coming for quite some time now. Brain Freeze being able to proc off of Ice Lance was a bit too powerful for PvP, and led to excess amount of Ice Lance spamming. Taking Deep Freeze off of the Cold as Ice list, I thought was uncalled for. They have already nerfed the Spell big time by taking off the Damage component, they really didn’t need to nerf it even further.Related Posts:

• Mage Tricks for Achievements

I just got my broom mount today, and unlike last years, the broom will auto adjust depending on your current riding skill level. So if you only have level 40 riding skill, so your broom will be the same speed as your current mount. If you have the epic flying mount skill, the broom will also fly in Outland as an epic flying mount. Sadly, like last year’s brooms, they still have the 14 day duration on the mounts. The good news is that it still retains its ability to be use for instant mounting.

Now I need the Pumpkin Sword, the Pumpkin Head helm, and the Pumpkin pet. Good luck to everyone on their loots!

To tell you the truth, I REALLY wanted to get him down before the Echoes of Doom patch, but glad to have finally kill the Deceiver himself, Kil’jaeden… well… his avatar.

You see, you don’t actually KILL Kil’jaeden, you just prevented him from entering into Azeroth through the portal. The portal was opened by Kael’thas, and he is using the power of the Sunwell to do so. You can read more about in my Anveena post awhile ago.

Well as you fight him and progress through the different phases. During the last phase, Anveena, who’s energy has been getting drained to summon Kil’jaeden, helps out the raid along with Kalecgos. During the final stages of the fight, she sacrifices herself to destroy the portal, pushing Kil’jaeden back through to where he came from.

Good thing Kil’jaeden was nice enough to drop his necklace and some nice loot before he went home! He’s a pretty nice guy after all. Here is our loot for the first kill.

Phat Loots:

• [Tattered Cape of Antonidas]
• [Cowl of Light's Purity]
• [Hand of the Deceiver]
• [Hammer of Sanctification]

Sadly I didn’t get any loot out of it. That cloak is very nice, and I hope to get it next time.

After Kil’jaeden is gone, Prophet Velen and Lady Liadrin shows up. Velen is the Leader of Exodar, and Lady Liadrin used to reside at Silvermoon, now you can see her pleading her case to A’dal. Prophet Velen then uses the remaining spark from M’uru to restore the power of the Sunwell.

All that is left after they leave is just Kalecgos, who is left to mourn the lost of his love, Anveena. Poor Kalecgos.

Well I didn’t receive any loots, but I haz achievements!

Related Posts:

• What NOT to do during Sunwell Raids

Patch 3.0.2 was released last night, and like any big patch night, it was chaotic. But at the same time, what you witnessed last night is a taste of what to expect on opening day for when Wrath of the Lich King hits a month from now.

With the latest patch, there was a lot of new stuff to play with. I would have made a post sometime yesterday, but I was busy messing around on WoW. There were new Talents, new Skills, new Features, and new Problems. You can view the latest patch notes here. Here is a rundown on a few of my experiences last night.

Server Stability:

“Emergency Server Shutdown in 15 Minutes” Pretty much sums it up. It even ended a good night of raiding for us as we were making our way through the Sunwell Plateau at record breaking time.

New Talents:

I went with all 61 Points into the Frost Tree and came up with a good PvE/PvP Build. I had a lot of fun with this spec, and was doing very good DPS.

New Skills:

As an Alchemist, I learned [Mixology] which pretty much gave me 4 hour Flask times, and 2 hour Elixir times. It only applies to Flasks and Elixirs which you can make yourself though.

I also dropped my Enchanting profession and picked up Inscription. So did half the players on the server probably. The little room in Stormwind was jam packed full of people crushing herbs, and creating scrolls and glyphs. Herb prices went through the roof.

As a Mage, we got new a Rank Frostbolt, Arcane Missiles, and Fireball (I think).

Glyphs:

While leveling my Inscription, I learned how to create a few Glyphs for Mages. Currently we are allowed to use 2 Major Glyphs, and 3 Minor Glyphs. Right now I am using: [Glyph of Evocation], [Glyph of Arcane Explosion], and [Glyph of the Penguin].

Raiding:

A WHOLE lot easier now with the new talents. Everyone is doing a ton more damage, tanks are taking less damage, bosses are dying faster. Kalecgos was at 50% before the first portal, Brutallus which is normally a 6 minute fight, died in 3 minutes. Felmyst died before the 3rd flying phase.

Our raiding night ended early however due to an “Emergency Server Shutdown”.

Mods/User Interface:

Most likely your UI will be broken and half your mods won’t be working. For me, my chat wasn’t working, and I could not see anything being said in /say, /party, /yell, /raid, /bg, /guild, /channels, nothing. Disabled all my mods, still nothing. I had to wipe out my UI completely and delete my WTF folder and rebuild my UI from scratch. /cry

This was probably the most painful thing about the new patch.

I signed on Thursday night on my Mage and it was pretty much like, “Welcome back! You are on dragon orb duty for KJ tonight!”. Doh! I was hoping to come back for a less stressful raiding job. More like making food, water, and spamming Frostbolts. We only had M’uru and Kil’jaeden left after their Tuesday raid.

We cleared to M’uru, and I was put on full-time DPS on M’uru. Hurray for not being on adds! We one-shotted M’uru with less than half the raid alive. No caster trinket. Then off to KJ.

An example of what NOT to do during Sunwell

Don’t worry, I only did this just for the screenshot. Notice the skilling up in Bejeweled while still DPSing. Pure Skillz!

There are two mobs on the way to KJ’s room. Two Void Reaver mobs that have similar abilities as that Void Reaver World Boss (I can’t think of the name right now). These two mobs happen to kill more raid members than most bosses in Sunwell for us (not including KJ).

I was a bit rusty when we started our attempts on Kil’jaeden, and even missed timed the Blue Shield… twice! (sorry guys). Then as the dragon controller, I have to deal with shield placement. I put up the shield and Player A from side A tells me I was too far away. Okies no problem. Next attempt I move a bit closer and put up shield. Player B from side B now tells me that I was too far from him. /sigh

We did however finally saw Phase 4 for the first time, and I was able to control the second Dragon Orb for the first time. From what I saw, the raid had to deal with a whole lot of falling rocks of fire, moving to avoid them, all while doing what they’ve been doing for the first 3 phases. I on the other hand am flying around as Puff the Magic Dragon, immune to all damage, watching as the raid members get killed off, one by one.

We’ve now got him down to 40%! We have 10 days left to kill him before the last patch before Wrath comes out. At that time, he will be either way too easy to kill, or way too difficult to even bother.Related Posts:

• Kil’jaeden: The Deceiver

My role in this fight has been changed from what I am typically used to in a boss fight. I’ve been selected to be the Dragon Orb Controller during the encounter. At first I was excited because I get to do something different, and something unique. Then it took me a few attempts to realize that the fate of the raid now depends on me. Eeek!

If you are familiar with the first boss in the Blackwing Lair, Razorgore, the Dragon Orbs are similar. You click on the Dragon Orb, and take control of a Dragon NPC, and use its various abilities to “beat the boss”. The reason why I was selected to be the Orb Controller? I am a Mage.

The room where we fight Kil’jaeden is a big circular room, and the four Dragon Orbs are spread out equally along the edge forming a sort of square inside the circle. During the fight a random orb will have a ring of fire around it, signifying that you must use that particular one. Being a Mage, we have the ability to go from Point A to Point B in a fairly short time.

The orb duty used to be split with me and another Warrior (he would use intercept on a player close to his orb), but then we got to a point where we have the execution down, but now need the DPS. So instead of having two players not DPSing full time, we can just use one.

Here is a video of what I do during the Kil’jaeden fight:

Phase 1: Three Mobs

• Kill the Summoners
• Stay at Max Ranged to avoid Shadowbolt Volley
• Stay away from Imps

Phase 2: Kil’jaeden the Deceiver

• DPS Kil’jaeden
• Kill Shield Orbs as soon as they appear.
• Ice Block out of Fire Bloom

Phase 3: Attack of the Clones

• Continue dealing with Shield Orbs
• Deal with Clones depending on class
• Orb Duty

Phase 4: Armageddon

• Didn’t make it this far in the video

Dragon Orb: Burninate the Countryside

• Haste and Revitalize Breath on Melee Group 1
• Haste and Revitalize Breath on Melee Group 2
• Position in the middle of raid for Shield
• Repeat

Link to Youtube Video HERE. Link to download the Video from RapidShare HERE (98mb).

I use the Breaths on the Melee groups because they will be doing the most damage on Kil’jaeden. Ranged DPS will be concentrating on Shield Orbs first, Kil’jaeden second. Shield must be used right before Kil’jaeden’s super move, or the raid will die. The fate of the raid rested in the hands of a Mage… Yay!

It took me a couple of attempts before I could get comfortable with using the Dragon, and get used to the abilities, and the cooldowns for each ability. Our best attempt so far is 54%, which is the start of Phase 4, but pretty much the entire raid was dead at that point, but it’s progression!Related Posts:

• What NOT to do during Sunwell Raids
• Kil’jaeden: The Deceiver
• Mage Tricks for Achievements
• Patch 3.0.3 – Buffs, Nerfs, and Fixes

Kil’jaeden

The encounter is definitely a fun fight. The M’uru/Entropius fight was really a good test and great preparation for the final battle with the Deceiver. The fight is a combination of a lot of boss encounters. It is like Magtheridon, Curator, Void Reaver, Razorgore the Untamed, Teron Gorefiend, and Hex Lord Malacrass, all put together into one fight.

The fight is also a lore extensive fight, much like the Illidan fight with Akama and Maiev Shadowsong. I suggest reading up on Anveena and Kalecgos to learn more about the whole Sunwell Plateau instance.

Spoiler Alert! The rest of the post will go through the phases of the fight, which will include some spoilers to the Sunwell story. I have also included a video of the first 3 Phases of the fight, so if you do not wish to know how the fight goes, or know how the fight ends, you might not want to continue.

The Deceiver

Phase One: The fight begins like the beginning of the Magtheridon fight where you take out summoners before the main boss is released. After the three Hands of the Deceivers are dead, Kil’jaeden is summoned out of the Sunwell.

Phase Two: Kil’jaeden is summoned, but he is only halfway out of the Sunwell when you fight him. During the fight, he spawns Shield Orbs which does damage similar to the one in the Teron Gorfiend, but moves around and can be killed like the orbs which Curator spawns. He spawns one orb every minute or so.

He also does random fire damage to the raid. Fire Bloom is casted on random raid members, which does periodic fire damage to the person, as well as anyone standing within 10 yards of the affected player. The next phase begins when you get Kil’jaeden down to 85%.

Phase Three: Right when he switches to this phase, he will randomly target a raid member, and creates four clones of that person. Much like the Hex Lord fight, the abilities of the clone differs depending on the class. The clones need to be picked up by a tank, and AoE’d down.

During this phase, Kil’jaeden will target random players and send a Shadow Spike at that person. Just like the Void Reaver fight, it has a travel time, and does AoE damage on impact, but instead of silencing the person when hit, it reduces incoming healing on the player. Oh and remember the Shield Orbs from the previous phase? He spawns two of them every minute or so now.

He also has another fire spell to do more random damage. Flame Darts hits the entire raid, and also reduces the player’s movement speed by 50%. This can be countered by the Blue Dragon’s haste buff.

That is not all. Every minute, Kil’jaeden does an ability called Darkness of a Thousand Souls which has an 8 second cast time, and does 50,000 Shadow Damage to the entire raid. How do you survive this? With the Blue Dragon’s shield ability.

During this phase, Kalecgos offers his helps and empowers one of the four Dragon Orbs located around the room. When he empowers one of them, one of the assigned raid members will click on the orb and take control a dragon, much like the Razorgore fight. The Blue Dragon has four abilities, a Blink, two cone breaths, and a shield. Perfect for a Mage to control.

Blink is exactly like a Mage’s Blink. The first breath gives a Haste buff to any raid members within the cone. The second breath restores health and mana to any raid members within the cone. The shield ability creates a big shield in which everyone in the raid can take cover under, and survive Kil’jaeden’s Darkness of a Thousand Souls. The next phase begins when Kil’jaeden is taken down to 55%.

Phase Four: The phase begins again with four more clones of an randomly targeted player. He also spawns three Shield Orbs instead of two. Another new ability is used. Armageddon is a spell he uses which drops a meteor which does 10,000 fire damage. Everyone must move out of the way before it hits. There will be 3 of them dropping at any given time.

Other than that, it is the same as the previous phase with the Shadow Spikes and Dragon Orbs . The next phase begins when Kil’jaeden is at 25%.

Phase Five: He begins the phase the same as the previous two phases with the clones again. This time, there will be no more Shield Orb spawns, and he now does Darkness of a Thousand Souls every 30 seconds or so. There will now be 5 Armageddon drops at any given time.

During this phase, Anveena sacrifices herself to help defeat Kil’jaeden. When she does her sacrifice, it causes Kil’jaeden to take 25% increased Holy Damage. Also at the time of the sacrifice, Kil’jaeden is stunned for 5 seconds, and all four Dragon Orbs are empowered.

This is the final phase, and there is a touching scene if you can get him down to 0%. You should also note that when you defeat Kil’jaeden, you don’t kill him, but prevent him from being fully summoned, and he goes back to where he was.

Here is a video of one of our attempts at Kil’jaeden. You can see phases 1-3 in this video.

The reason why you see me panning the camera up a lot is because I was looking for Shield Orbs (I didn’t have a /target macro set yet), and the reason why I was panning left and right was because I was on Dragon Orb duty, and was keeping an eye on the two orbs I was assigned to.

As always, you can download a better version of the video HERE from Rapidshare. The file size is about 85mb.

[Images and General Strategy used was taken from wowwiki.com]

Related Posts:

• What NOT to do during Sunwell Raids
• Kil’jaeden: The Deceiver

We now had four total Priests for the Felmyst attempts mainly for the Mass Dispels needed on the raid.

Hopefully we won’t get too dependant on having four Priests all the time, and will be able to get her down with only three in the future. Not that having an extra Shadow Priest in the raid is a bad thing or anything.

Like I said before, Felmyst is like Nightbane on steroids. Not only that, she makes the raid dance around, moving all together like the Heigan fight from Naxxaramas.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with that fight, Heigan does ground eruptions on the floor the raid is standing on, with only one safe spot per eruption, and the raid must move together and “dance” to each safe spot or else you get caught in the eruption and die.

In Phase 1, Felmyst attacks on the ground. 

She has an aura which does raid-wide damage which ticks for 1000 Nature Damage every 3 seconds. This Damage is just healed through by the raid healers. Frost Mages can put up Ice Barrier to help absorb some of the damage. 

Every 20-25 seconds she will cast Gas Nova on the entire raid. This debuff ticks for 3000 Nature Damage every 2 seconds, and drain 1000 Mana every tick. This is where the Priests come in handy. Gas Nova is a 1 second cast, so when the Priests see her casting it, they must immediately cast their Mass Dispels in their designated area to quickly rid of this nasty debuff. One poorly timed Mass Dispel may kill five or more players, which will lead to a wipe.

On a 25-30 second timer, she will randomly cast Encapsulated on a raid member. That person will be trapped in an orb for 6 seconds and take 3500 Arcane Damage every 2 seconds. Not only that, anyone within 20 yards of that person will also take the same damage. Felmyst will not be attacking the Main Tank at this time while she is channeling on the Encapsulated target so all healers can switch to keep this person alive. Mages can Iceblock out of this to avoid taking any damage and not worry about people around you taking damage too. Arcane Protection Potions/Cauldrons will help a lot for this.

At least ONE of us remembered to take a killshot >_<

Phase 1 lasts for sixty seconds, at which she flies into the air and begin Phase 2.

While she is in the air, she will cast Demonic Vapor on a random target. This green puke beam will follow the person she targeted, and chase them around for 10 seconds. That person must kite that beam away from the raid and to a safe area. That beam also leaves a poisonous trail which spawns skeletons as you run away from the beam. Also, if anyone walks through this path, they will take 2.5k Damage a tick for 10 seconds AND spawn an additional skeleton. Mages can Blink away from the beam to get an extra few steps ahead of the beam to safely kite it away from the raid. She does this twice per air phase.

These skeletons have around 33,000 hit points and must be gathered and tanked (most likely by a Paladin Tank), and then AoE’d down. After two Demonic Vapors, she makes the raid “dance” from one area to another. She flies by and releases a cloud of Green Vapor, and if you get caught it in, you will become Mind Controlled and the only way you can get out of it, is if your raid kills you.

DDR Fever. Normally you would have one person watching Felmyst’s movements in the air, and will call out to the raid where to run for the “safe spot“. If he calls to run North, Middle, or South, the entire raid must run to that area, or they will be hit by the Green Vapor. Felmyst will have you dancing back and forth for three breathes, and will then land and begin Phase 1 again. For Mages, after the third Green Vapor, there is a ten second window for you to cast Invisibility to completely drop aggro. This is very helpful since you will be generating a lot of threat while she is in the air, while the tank cannot generate any threat.

Felmyst has a 10 minute enrage timer, which is three Phase 1 and 2 rotations, at which she will most likely one-shot your main tank, and work her way down the aggro list.

This is a pretty fun fight, well for a Mage it is fun at least. We get to DPS, Kite, and AoE. All of which, is our specialties

Chyeah Mages Represent! Full Report Here

Our Phat Lootz! Felmyst must have saw how crappy my shoes were right before she bit the dust, so she dropped for us: [Boots of the Forgotten Vanquisher] x 3, and a [Grand Magister's Staff of Torrents]. Yay Mage loots!

I grabbed me the first token and now haz me Tier 6 Boots to replace my Kara Boots.

Next up: Eredar Twins

Double the Pleasure, Double the Fun!Related Posts:

• What NOT to do during Sunwell Raids
• Kil’jaeden: The Deceiver
• Patch 3.0.3 – Buffs, Nerfs, and Fixes
• Mage Tricks for Achievements